1001 things to do with an IWB ...

Yesterday PM I attended an IS opportunity arranged by my employer and delivered by Roy Huggins. If you have read the seminar on this site, you'll know about the potential of an IWB for our subject.

The IS was terrific. It's always great when you get classroom teachers together to learn something which is of direct use for the chalk face and delivered by someone like Roy who is such an enthusiast and so skilled at doing the business where it matters most - in the classroom with REAL adolescents. So thanks Roy.

However, I digress. Thinking about the IS, it occurred to me that what I enjoyed most was the practical tips bit and the way in which Roy stressed the interactivity potential of the IWB rather than one way didactic teaching or "Death by Powerpoint." For example, Roy showed a clip from "A man for all seasons" and asked us to suggest 5 things about Henry VIII, then work in pairs to produce a final list. I immediately thought of using it in our "Mary Queen of Scots" Intermediate course!

So I thought I would start this thread so that contributors could offer ONE (or more if you like) practical example each of how they use an IWB to bring variety and interactivity to an actual lesson.

To start off ...

I produced a "Half a Minute" quiz to review several lessons worth of work from our "Red Flag" (Russian Revolution) Intermediate topic. (See http://www.contentgenerator.net/ for the free quiz generator) The beauty of the Half a Min quiz is its simplicity. You just pick a list of key words from those lessons and the quiz turns them into anagrams which the kids have to solve in 30 secs while the clock counts down and the "Countdown" music plays.

I took the class through the quiz once and then got kids up to the IWB to spell out the words correctly. I chose the victims but a variation would be to get each victim to select the next one from the class in a challenge. I told them that I'd keep the class back one minute into break for every word they got wrong. Cruel eh! Of course, if a word was particularly hard I picked one of the brighter kids and said they could win back the minute that a kid had just lost the class. The class was allowed to call out the word and help the victim with the spelling.

Result? A class totally focused on the activity and howling out the answers and correct spelling and HAVING FUN.

That's just one suggestion about using an IWB. Let's have lots more. And remember what Roy Huggins says in the IWB seminar ... "variety is the spice of life."

Edited by A Finemess, 28 October 2006 - 05:06 PM.

“All men dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out otheir dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”.(T.E. Lawrence)
<img src="http://www.cyberium....lawrence-1.jpg" border="0" class="linked-sig-image" /> Who said bikers can't be pretentious?

I have a low ability group who struggle to remember key words and terms and I had to get them to complete an essay on 'Why William Won the Battle of Hastings'.

I designed a PPT with tasks on every slide, but I also recorded myself, with a dodgy French accent, explaining the key words/terms on every slide. Students who struggled with the tasks, which involved the key terms, were able to come up to the front and use the pen to tap the IWB which had explanations of the key terms as wav files.

Students who otherwise felt uncomfortable putting their hands up were quite happy to go up to the board and tap the wav file.

I also thought of the following idea today after a wee spin on the finemessbike to Crichton castle which is some 15 miles south of Edinburgh and in the middle of nowhere.

Go to google maps UK and type in a search on Pathhead, Midlothian. Use the hybrid map which shows modern features such as roads etc. You can zoom in and out to show the whole of the central lowlands at first and then zoom in to show the area around the castle.

Ask the kids where the modern cities are on the map. Get them to circle them on the board. They're easy to spot - stains on the landscape. Now mark in the site of the castle which of course is nowhere near any modern conurbation. The past is another country of course.

So why was the castle built there?

Use a pen to mark in the route of the A68 and A7 both primary routes to the less civilised part of the modern UK now as they were in the past. (A68 is built on the Roman road Dere Street and the A7 route follows river valleys into the Borders so it probably pre-dates the Roamns by a couple of millennia.)

The castle is slap bang in the middle where it can command these routes!

Could be used for any lesson on the reasons for castle building of course.

“All men dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out otheir dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”.(T.E. Lawrence)
<img src="http://www.cyberium....lawrence-1.jpg" border="0" class="linked-sig-image" /> Who said bikers can't be pretentious?

This is a great idea for a thread - thanks Finemess. I've put it into the Seminars section as it can develop into a really useful and helpful resource. We might be able to pick quite a few ideas from a thread on the EffectiveICT.co.uk forum too - feel free to look there and grab anything that could be useful.

For me the best use of a whiteboard is where you have some materials developed by the teacher that the students can then interact with. This interaction only needs to be pretty basic for the learning to be very effective. For example I often use a large image on the interactive whiteboard and ask students to grafitti all over it. Anything they feel is interesting or useful they should come to the front, circle and annotate. As you can save anything students add to the image it can then be used in many different ways.

You could have your own annotations that you've prepared earlier - the next task could be to compare and contrast these. You could prepare some ridiculous suggestions and ask students to challenge them. If you have two or more classes of the same yeargroup you could get them to compare each others work too.

The abilty for students to annotate and save whiteboard work is fantastic though. You could begin with some grafitti work, continue onto the main task and then bring their work up again to recap and identify what they now understand. A really simple idea that I find very effective.

Just got back from Edinburgh. Decided to take a break at Corbridge and walk along the wall to Hexham. Unfortunately, I was caught in a rain / thunderstorm and feel like I'm coming down with Nicky's flu!

Anyway, 5 simple ideas before I settle down for my bottle of wine:

1. Starter: Snowballing. Display the key words for the lesson. Give the students two minutes to study them. You then use the curtain feature of smart notes to hide them. The students then have 2 minutes to write as many as they can in the back of their key exercise book. You then give them 1 minute to share their answers add add to their list. You then get them to peer / self assess their answers. Simple, but effective.

2. Plenary: Continuum: After having studied various cards on individuals in a historical situation the students then drag and drop an image of the character onto a continuum on the IWB: For example: Support for teh Nazi Party - Jews, Communists, Hitler Youth, SA Officeetc

3. Thinking Skills Review Triangle: Historical Question and get the students to select the five most important facts or factors: Why did people believe in witchcraft - wanted to get rid of old ladies who relied upon charity. People wee supersitious etc

5. Use smart Notes to model an answer to demonstrate the thinking process behind writing an answer

6. Plenary 1: Get the students to annotate the answer to show how the answer / paragragh has been PEE'd - Point - Evidence - Explaination or CCCJed - Comment, Content, Context and Judgement

7. Using the key words from the snowballing activity meantioned in 1 and the model answer in 5 - get the students tro highlight how the teacher / student has used teh key words on teh IWB

8. Scan the HW of three students - put them up on the IWB and get the rest of the class to peer review the work - annotate with PEE, grade, level or highlight the use of key words and evidence

9. KWLH Table - Know: 5 thinks I know already about this topic - Want to know - two questions I would like answering - Learnt - 5 facts I've learnt this lesson and finally Homework - 5 new facts I've found out for HW

10. Plenary: Download one of Andy's content generators to create a a quick and simple fling the teacher quizz

11. Use one of the manny graphic organisers Ive mentioned before to drag and drop etc. I'll post some more tomorrow.

Kind Regards

Roy

PS If anyone is passing Mexborough School they are always welcome to pop in for an afternoon / day to observe some lessons and recieve some training on IWBS, ripping video and using ICT interactively as a learning tool rather than justa presentational tool.

Edited by rhuggins, 28 October 2006 - 07:09 PM.

"Men are disturbed, not by the things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen." - Epictetus

The abilty for students to annotate and save whiteboard work is fantastic though. You could begin with some grafitti work, continue onto the main task and then bring their work up again to recap and identify what they now understand. A really simple idea that I find very effective.

I've been using a whiteboard for a few months now and this is by far the best thing about them. Being able to save what we have done and either use it again or show it to another class is something I've never been able to do before.

For example, with Year 10 we are doing South Africa and we have just looked at the 10 point plan of the Freedom Charter. The Charter is mentioned in our books and I copied out the ten point plan onto the board. I divided the board into four sections. Each point of the plan fitted into one of the sections (this is the work the book suggests but it asked students to write it all out in their books.) I then got students to come to the front and using their finger, drag a point into the correct box. Some of the points could actually fit into two of the boxes, but it's easy to clone so that was no problem.

All very simple and easy but the best bit is that I saved it and can refer back to it in later lessons, and other classes can use it to see if they agree. It can stay their for ever so Year 10 can refer back to it when the revise for their GCSE in May 2008!

Thinking is SO important Baldrick. What do YOU think?
I think thinking is SO important, my Lord.

OK you two - don't spoil the seminar with idle chit-chat. I don't think you should be allowed to post a response in this seminar thread without actually posting additional ideas.

So - here is one more (completely original as I've just thought about it).

IWB Bullseye.

PowerPoint presentation showing on your board. Large circle divided into eight different segments. Hyperlink each segment to a question. Students have to come up to the board and click on a particular segment.

This then takes them to a question, an image or some resource linked to your current topic. They then have to respond either sharing their thoughts, explaining that section etc. etc.

Just another quick way of getting students involved and engaged. I'll put together a Flash version of this in the future - I think it might work well.

Don't think is been mentioned but Russ's www.classtools.net has some great and practical IWB resources on it - lots of graphic organisers like the one Roy attached. And games too.

I also recommend getting the digital camera, snapping students in action and adding thought bubbles to the pic using powerpoint. This means the plenary/starter can be the images and 'what were they thinking/doing/saying/trying to improve'. It provides a strong emotional and visual cue for memory, and is entertaining too.

Oh and putting a list of key dates on one side and a scrambled list of events on another so students can draw lines between them as a starter. The peer assisstance is normaly gentle and encouraging!

The kids have to understand why Mary's return to Scotland was so unsettling. They therefore have to know about the complexities of the Tudor dynasty. There's a family tree of Henry VIII in their workbook. I got them to study this for a minute and then turn it over. Then showed a jumbled up version on the smartboard. Got a kid up to put it in the correct order. Other kids got to assess if he was correct. Then Q&A to indicate religious affiliation which got written below by the pupil.

Simple but a lot better than putting the family tree up and chuntering about it.

“All men dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out otheir dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”.(T.E. Lawrence)
<img src="http://www.cyberium....lawrence-1.jpg" border="0" class="linked-sig-image" /> Who said bikers can't be pretentious?